Consent-Oriented Architecture

Discussion

Dmytri Kleiner:

"Capitalist platforms based on the sale of the audience as a commodity and capturing marketplace rents demand a sacrifice of privacy and autonomy.

Audiences, like all commodities, are sold by measure and grade. Eggs are sold in dozens as grade A, for example. An advertisers might buy a thousand clicks from middle-aged white men who own a car and have a good credit rating.

Audiences are graded by " demographics." Platforms with business models that sell audiences require surveillance. Likewise, platforms that capture marketplace rents collect extensive data on their users and providers in order to maximize profitability.

A mandatory sacrifice of consent is required to use the platforms. When users share information on a platform, they may consent to sharing that information with certain intended people, but they don't necessarily consent to that information being available to the platform’s staff, to advertisers, or to business partners and state intelligence agencies. Yet, as there are no practical alternatives for most users, they must sacrifice such consent in order to use the platform.

Corporations built to maximize profits are unable to build consensual platforms. Their business model depend fundamentally on surveillance and behavioral control. To build consensual platforms require that privacy, security, and anonymity be built into the platforms as core features. The most effective way to secure consent is to ensure that all user data and control of all user interaction resides with the software running on the user’s own computer, not on any intermediary servers." (http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Exploitation_and_Rent-Seeking_Models_in_Social_Media_and_P2P_Exchange_Platforms)